Growing up, I had the pinkest bedroom imaginable.  The wallpaper looked like this.  (Thanks to nopatternrequired.com  and The Vintage Resource for the pilfered image.)

The moldings were pink.  The carpet was pink.  These weren’t tame, pastel pinks.  They were bubble gum and Pepto-Bismol.  I loved that bedroom until I was roughly ten years old.  Then, I begged my parents to paint the walls white and refinish the floors beneath that pink shag carpet.

Pink became symbolic with a kind of girliness that I had rejected.

When we bought our 1950’s era home, we inherited a pink bathroom.  Initially, I hated my Mamie pink bathroom.  It has a tiny pink bathtub, a shower that is striped in pink tile, and a pink sink.  We joked that the builders had allowed a six year old girl to design the room.  We plotted the pink bathroom’s demise.

However, as we began to live with our pink bathroom, attitudes started to slowly change.  Our little bathtub is perfect for kids.

We also began to appreciate the fact that our Kohler Mayflower tub was built to survive a nuclear holocaust.  We started to question the wisdom of refinishing such a well built thing.

At the same time, our attitudes towards renovation began to evolve.  We started replacing fixtures that weren’t authentic to the era.  We wanted to honor our home’s history.

Lastly, as a parent, I am increasingly aware of my impact on how Bambino sees gender.  He loves pink.  I have struggled to find pink shirts for my little boy.  I have bitched that pink is a color, not an identity.  At the same time, I was whining that my bathroom was outdated and “girly”.  I was a pink hypocrite.

Admittedly, it is an outdated room. While I love that pink bathtub, there are things that need to be improved.  Our original vanity has seen better days.  The 4×4 tiles in our countertop are impossible to keep clean.  The floor is chipped, cracked, and shows il Cane’s shedding to an embarrassing degree.

I started researching pink bathroom renovations.  It seems like people do one of several things:

• Embrace the kitsch, and go full mid-century flamingo.
• Turn it into a princess room.
• Or, go Miami-modern.

None of these are my style.  I want a room that celebrates its pink heritage, but isn’t a theme room.  I want a room that Bambino can splash in, but I can find beautiful.  We’re going to make it up as we go along.

Normally, I write about travel.  This is a different kind of adventure.  Thankfully, we’ll have a perfect pink bathtub available when Bambino is covered in grout and/or paint.

Stay tuned.